Turner
constructed the "1831
Confessions" as a means, as a guide, by which his life

and his "great work" could be read and understood. These
existential exertions, that is,

these efforts to interpret God’s presence in the world, exemplify
Turner’s conception

of the religious life, of living fully engaged
in the world.

Section 2,
Chapter 7 Coming to Grips with Injustice & Corruption

Nathaniel
Turner

Christian Martyrdom in Southampton

A Theology
of Black Liberation

By Rudolph Lewis

* * * *
*

Methodist Elders Interview Miracle Child

Recognition of Nathaniel's Spiritual Gifts

The Cross Keys Methodist religious leaders became
aware of the miracle of the slave boy Nathaniel, from Harriet, his
spiritual mother. Benjamin Turner also had taken note of the child. But
there was also a formal interview of the child, son of Nancy of the
Nile and possibly his master Benjamin Turner. Those at this interview included,
according to the
"1831
Confessions," Harriet, other
"religious persons who visited the [Turner] house," others
whom Nathaniel "often saw at prayers," and the host Benjamin Turner.

Harriet told them that the child knew of events
before his birth and she also pointed out the birth marks. This
board of interviewers took note, Turner told Gray, of the
"singularity of my manners," my "uncommon
intelligence for a child" and "remarked that I had too
much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any
service to any one as a slave."

The prophecy or forecast of Benjamin Turner and his Methodists
would be fulfilled, but not in the manner these Methodists of Turner’s
Meeting House had then hoped. These "religious persons,"
Elders of the church and ministers of the gospel, seemingly, were
not adverse to manumission of individual slaves. This Christian
community in which Harriet, Nathaniel’s spiritual mother, participated
was opened to both slave and free, white and black.

That is, these Methodists headed by Benjamin Turner
strove for the Pauline ideal of the Church, neither condemning nor
condoning slavery. Slavery was a divinely ordered condition, a
spiritual test, that both slave and slaveholder had to endure within
the constraints of Christian brotherhood and grace. These were fine
sentiments that the young Nathaniel took to heart.

The Elders of Cross Keys received yet another
sign of the uniqueness of the slave child in their midst. This
second miracle gave further evidence to Harriet’s prophecy that
Nathaniel would be a prophet. Turner told Gray, "I have no
recollection whatever of learning the alphabet . . . one day when a
book was shown me to keep from crying, I began spelling the names of
different objects—this was a source of wonder to all in the
neighborhood, particularly the blacks." Nathaniel astonished the
Turner family by the ease at which he learned to read and write.
Many believed his gift of knowledge was indeed another sign of God
consciousness in the child.

The acquisition of knowledge without study was a
recognized biblical phenomena. In his prophecy of the coming
Messiah,
Isaiah 11.2-5 lists the
seven gifts of the Spirit: wisdom,
understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, fear of the Lord, and
purity of heart. These could be gained without formal study. They
were available to men of God. They also were standards by which to
judge one’s self and one’s relationship with the divine. Viewing
his life in the spiritual light of these Southampton religionists,
Turner was deeply affected by the notion of God in history and in
man.

Religion, thereafter, became the principal
subject to occupy the boy’s mind. "Restless, inquisitive, and
observant," Turner told Gray, "there was nothing that I
saw or heard of to which my attention was not directed." In
still more wondrous ways, the manifestation of his spiritual gifts
"constantly improved at all opportunities." Turner became
aware of his spiritual development.

Learning to read the language of man, nature, and
God is a thematic motif that runs throughout Turner’s testament.
The
"1831
Confessions" text is intended as a window. Turner constructed the
"1831
Confessions" as a means, as a guide, by which his life
and his "great work" could be read and understood. These
existential exertions, that is, these efforts to interpret and
figure out how to interpret God’s presence in the world, exemplify
Turner’s conception of the religious life, of living fully engaged
in the world.

Turner, like other Christian slaves, considered
Moses the model prophet. For Moses "was learned in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds"
(Acts 7.22). According to Joseph Fichtner, Moses, the prototype for
all subsequent prophets, "was given all the scientific and
military training available" (Forerunners
of Christ, p. 20).
This spiritual legacy, Turner claimed as his own.

Literacy and broad learning, however, was not a
requirement of Methodists leaders or ministers. Though many of the
early itinerant Methodist preachers possessed little formal
education, "[John] Wesley and [Francis] Asbury . . . did insist
that the itinerants read extensively for their own spiritual
growth" (The
Garden of American Methodism, p. 122). According to F. Roy Johnson,
"Benjamin Turner and his foreparents for three generations seem
to have been unlettered or almost so" (The Nat Turner Slave Insurrection, p. 18).

In this folk environment, Turner’s literary
achievements were indeed miraculous and unexplainable. Here is one
of the strange paradoxes of a hierarchical society. As a child,
Turner had greater literary attainments than many whites in
Southampton, not only the older Turners but also other slaveowners.
How could this be, if God had not had his hand in it? Turner’s
precocity was the foreshadowing of a great moral dilemma: how to
accommodate a God-taught person to slavery and racial oppression.

The
book explains the role the rise of
Methodism played with people on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland, Delaware, and
Virginia during the years 1769-1820. I
is important reading for Methodist
history as well as Delmarva history. A
growing consensus among historians
recognizes this Chesapeake region as the
center not only of Methodist growth
among African Americans but also as the
proving ground for the future of the
movement in the new country. Delmarva is
celebrated by "the garden of American
Methodism." It was home for many years
to Francis Asbury, the "father of
American Methodism" and fostered perhaps
the strongest sectional opposition to
slavery in the early US church.

I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.

Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.”

We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have
disrupted and convulsed the planet and will continue
to do so until we are finally living on one
integrated or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of all this
remarkable change will survive the process they
helped to initiate more than five hundred years ago
remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question.

Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .

The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.”